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    Joined: Nov 2008
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    julieg Offline OP
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    Hi -- I'm new to this forum and I hope that I have been posting topics and replies correctly.

    We are considering home schooling our 9 year old son (DS9). He has been radically accelerated in school and is currently 9 and in 7th/8th grade at the Jr. High. Academically it is going OK (some classes still too easy), but peer (and sometimes teacher/administrator) interaction leaves something to be desired. We also feel that the general atmosphere of a Jr. High is too much and is too stressful for a 9 year old, not to mention the homework load.

    We are hoping that homeschooling might allow DS9's pace of life to slow down. He often has so much homework right now that he doesn't have time to be free, play and just think!

    Our thinking is to homeschool him at least for a few years until he matures some and then determine either to continue homeschooling or have him placed at the appropriate level in high school or high school/college.

    Does this make sense? I guess what I'm asking is, "Is it feasible to think of him as a very advanced homeschooled 4th grader, rather than a 7th/8th grader?" Is there any problem with this and re-entry into the public school system?

    Thanks,

    Julie

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    I think it depends on what you mean by "think of him." For your own sake, sure. No problem. One of the nice things about homeschooling is you can think about your child any way that works for you. Total flexibility!

    But as for re-entering a traditional school...it gets a lot more tricky. Not because it can't be done--I have friends whose kids float back and forth between HSing, public schools and private schools almost every year!--but because your child is going to learn at his own pace for a year, and if he was ahead before, he's probably going to RACE ahead this year! My son--who never seemed very math-y to me--was mastering high school geometry last year at age 6! I was so amazed!

    Which leads me to another issue...getting out of step with the schools in the sense of asynchronous learning. DS7 was mastering geometry, but he hadn't yet memorized his times tables, so while he was way ahead in one sense, we sure weren't following the traditional path to get there.

    Obviously you don't have to approach things this way. You can follow a very traditional curriculum path. We started out that way. But the fact is that it's hard to resist the siren call of independent study. It's hard to resist following your child and his interests as he gets excited about learning again. Unless you have a super-dee-duper school situation already in mind for next year, you may find that it's just not completely practical--let alone desirable!--to go back once you've homeschooled.

    With that said, I do have plans for DS7 once he gets beyond my ability to teach him. There's a private GT school in our area that I intend to send him to when he's past my usefulness to him. But even there, I worry about the fit.

    I guess the big worry I have is if you teach your DS at the 7th/8th grade level and then put him back into the 4th grade. There's going to be fallout, since that would be like holding him back 3-4 grade levels! It doesn't seem very practical...


    Kriston
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    julieg Offline OP
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    Thank you for your thoughts. I guess what I'm thinking about is at some point re-entering the public or a private school setting. Here's a scenario:

    What if we homeschooled DS9 for 1-3 years starting from where he is right now (7th/8th grade), but do not worry about his accomplishing everything that is in 7th/8th grade public school curriculum. We just want him to have less of a work load and enjoy learning again. He might do something beyond and somethings at 7th/8th grade level and somethings not at all. Ditto this for a couple of years. Once DS9 is more mature, and if we think going into a high school environment is a good choice, then how do we determine what grade he would go into upon re-entry? Is there a "standard" or common way that a public school will determine where he should be grade wise and also credit wise?

    I hope it is clearer what I am asking....

    Thanks,

    Julie

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    I have no idea about re-entry... but the rest of it sounds like us! smile

    DS is 9, and working at something in the middle-school-to-high-school level all around... (And he does fine with older kids, but I'm not sure how he'd do in a school all day with any age kids, since he's never actually tried it.) But it has worked out really well to count him as a fifth grader (we did do that one skip) even though his work is almost completely much higher than that.

    That said, if my DS had been enrolled in 7th/8th and I took him out to homeschool, I think I'd "officially" still list him as 7th or 8th. One of the major benefits of homeschooling at our house is that we can do the harder work but still have quite an open schedule, just because we can be flexible. Also, we can be extremely coordinated. When he has a busy week in one area (book group, or Lego team, or the science fair project) we ease up on something else. Or if we're going to be in the car, we'll do more Pimsleur Spanish and less of the reader and the workbook we use. By the end of May we've usually got it all in, but the schedule can be tweaked in any direction so no single day or week is overwhelming.

    Also on the coordinated front, if he's going to have to do some writing for, for instance, Lego Team, I might up the requirements just a bit and count it as a writing assignment (making it a full paper instead of only notes, or something like that). All of this together means that while a laundry list of the things that get done around here would sound like a ridiculous amount of time and energy, we still seem to have time for playdates and park days and free evenings and weekends. (Well, outside of Lego season anyway... LOL)

    SO anyway! I think in your situation, provided it didn't require any Herculean reporting, I would keep him at the grade he is now, but take advantage of anything you can do to open up the schedule a bit. Especially if he's impatient to move on in some areas, and if a toxic school atmosphere is the main problem, you might find that it works out really well that way.

    Hope this helps!


    Erica
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    My guess is that if you homeschool your DS for 1-3 years, he will then be ready for college and public school reentry will be moot.

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    Some of going back to a traditional school situation depends on the child's patience with retreading familiar material, too. An impatient, easily bored child isn't going to fare well with returning to a lower grade level. But age and maturity help with that somewhat, especially if there are challenges in at least some areas.

    One of my goals with homeschooling DS7 is to "go wide" and not just fast. There's a limit to that, of course, but the independent nature of HSing allows us to study some subjects not usually taught in primary OR secondary schools. Archaeology, for example. Or code-breaking. This lets me challenge him without pushing him further out of synch with his age group.

    As for re-entry and proving where he is: standardized tests help. AP exams, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (or the similar California test whose name escapes me right now...), etc. can help to establish that your child has mastered a particular grade level. You might also ask to have your child take the midterms and finals for the grade before the one you want him in. If he can pass with a previously agreed-upon score (I'd aim for the 80%-ish range, but other people might shoot higher or lower. What you push for is your call, I think...), then he has passed that grade.

    If you go with that latter suggestion, then I'd also do my best to make arrangements about what to do if he gets most things right but has one or two areas of deficiency. To cite a recent case mentioned on this forum (I think), a child who has never seen a minus sign might do all the subtraction problems on a test as addition. That doesn't mean he is incapable of doing subtraction. If something like that is all he misses, and it's from lack of exposure, not lack of understanding, then you might want to have an agreement in place about catching him up if only one or two areas are a problem.


    Kriston
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    I just want to say... this is a great thread! thanks for all your answers, very helpful and insightful!


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    this has been a really neat thread to read...we have been concerned with the same thing with our DS5 on a much lesser degree than the original post though. There were NO exceptions in our area for any kind of acceleration or differentiated instruction for an advanced kindergartener...so we began homeschooling this year for kindergarten- here we are several months into it and he is complaining that the end of First grade Singapore math is too easy and he's reading on an almost 3rd grade level....so I am attempting to figure out his true level of work but it has been a very exciting to watch him and allow him to explore whatever topics interest him. We were also concerned about how in the world would he go back into public school because he is so out of whack concerning grade levels.

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    I have a friend who was homeschooling before I was, and so she mentored me through the transition from public school to homeschooling. She warned me from before we decided to do it that homeschooling is addictive. I think she's right, for many reasons! wink


    Kriston
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    julieg Offline OP
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    Thanks to everyone--this has been insightful--I'm a real planner, so I think part of the home schooling issue for me is being able to have a looser structure and also not being able to completely see the exact path to college-level work. But reality is that we haven't been following the path anyway, this would just be not following the traditional path in a different way!

    I like the idea of IOWA testing because our school system uses this test up to 7th grade. DS9 took the 7th grade IOWAs last year (at age 8 and a 6th grader) and scored high enough that the school wanted to put him fully in 8th grade--DS9 didn't want any further acceleration, so we did not accelerate further.

    I have a couple of questions about the IOWAs:

    Does anyone know how far in grade-level they go? Up to grade 12?

    How do you get the IOWA administered?

    Do you recommend he take his "grade-level" IOWA or out of grade level to show true progress?

    Also, what about taking the ACT or SAT?

    Thanks again--Julie

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